Great Fermentations - Indy and Avon Locations

Big Brew Details

May 7th 2016

Organized by the American Homebrewers Association (AHA), AHA Big Brew celebrates National Homebrew Day, honored on the first Saturday of May each year. This event brings together thousands of homebrewers from around the world, all brewing beer simultaneously! More than 11,000 homebrewers from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America and Australia are expected to participate this year. So, come join Great Fermentations at either our Indianapolis or Avon locations, brew a batch a beer with fellow homebrewers from around the world, and help us celebrate this great hobby.

Details for the Day

Brew Day | Both Locations (REGISTRATION REQUIRED)

The main event for Big Brew day! Come demonstrate your brewing prowess and equipment by making a batch of beer in our parking lot! To entice you, we're giving 20% OFF all batches of beer brewed in our parking lot that day (10 gallon batch limit)! If you want to brew, make sure to register using one of the registration links below!!!!

- Brewer setup is from 9-10:30 a.m. Brewers need to be packed up and ready to leave by 4 p.m.

- Brewers are responsible for bringing their own equipment!

- HOWEVER, we will be providing chiller stations, so no need for you to bring your own wort chillers.

- Tap or Reverse Osmosis water will be available if needed

- There is a batch size limit of 10 gallons

- To get your 20% off for brew day ingredients, order no later than May 6th. Sorry, no exceptions!

Matt Bochman is a molecular biologist with too many credentials to list on this website! Recently he put his yeast skills to good use as a craft brewery and distillery consultant and co-founded Wild Pitch Yeast to supply yeast-related services to brewers in the Midwest. During this session, he’s going to talk about hunting for yeast in your own backyard, the perils and rewards of brewing with local wild strains, and his efforts to domesticate some of these strains!

Confused and drowning trying to prepare the perfect water for brewing? Come learn how to build your own brewing water from Distilled or Reverse Osmosis! In this seminar, you will learn the importance water plays in your mash chemistry and how to guarantee full conversion. You will also learn about the different salt additions, how they affect the final flavor of your beer, and go through a step-by-step process of building your own water profile!

With sour and “brett” beers becoming more popular and accessible, many homebrewers are wanting to try making them themselves. But making sour and/or funky beers requires several months to several years of fermentation time and the use of entirely separate plastic equipment (fermenting buckets, siphoning and bottling equipment) to decrease the risk of cross-contamination. This lecture explores three different methods homebrewers can use to make their own sour beers that shorten fermentation time and will not infect their equipment.

Explore the hidden world of your fermentations with this quick overview of some brewing microbiology with Jesse Jacobsen and Tim Cramer of MONK Homebrew Club. Learn to use a microscope and hemocytometer to count the yeast cells in your pitch and run a quick viability test. Take a look at some common contaminating bugs to see what might be messing with your beer! We’ll finish up with a brief discussion about how and why to do yeast starters to multiply your yeast colony.